Eternals has a clue about Shang-Chi’s post-credit scene, Marvel Phase 4

For years, there was only one answer for every outstanding storyline in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: “just wait until Thanos shows up in Avengers: infinity war, and Avengers Endgame. “But now, after a long delay, Marvel Studios is finally weaving new material onto its stage, with movies like Eternal and Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings.

There is little in Phase 4 that indicates precisely where all these new roads lead. But in the spirit of the central promise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that it’s all connected – let’s ask a pertinent question:

Hey, wait a second. Are the Ten Rings of Shang-chi Eternal technology?

Why did I yell “Shang-Chi post-credit scene!” while watching Eternals

Image: Marvel Studios

In one of his two credit scenes, Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings He went back to a plot point mentioned earlier in the movie about the origin of his titular artifacts. Wenwu discovered the Ten Rings thousands of years before modern times and allowed the legend of that discovery to mutate. I mean, we don’t know exactly how he found them, and even he didn’t know who made them.

And at the end of Shang-chi, we find out that not even the Avengers can figure out what the Rings are. They don’t match anyone’s experiences, not Bruce Banner’s scientific understanding, Wong’s magical experience, or Carol Danvers’ knowledge of alien technology.

It is quite possible that what is being shown here is a revelation about the broader history of Shang-chi – After all, the Ten Rings have a very specific (and strange) origin in Marvel Comics. Ultimately, the rings may not connect to anything else that has been or will be established in the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But Eternal it certainly looks like it could be a clue.

[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Eternals.]

Phastos loves giving technology to humans

Image: Marvel Studios

Each Eternal in Eternal has its specialties, be it tanks, healers, or a support class. They even have their own resident engineer, Phastos, who is really tempted to help humanity accelerate its technological development. During a scene in Eternal, proposes to give some humans a fully equipped steam engine, and they have to be persuaded to help them invent the plow.

The other key thing about Phastos, for the purposes of this speculation, is that his powers have a very specific look: spinning constructions of concentric circles that wind around each other, contracting and expanding shapes, all colored in the metallic gold of the Eternals. .

And boy, does that sure sound like the aesthetic that contracts and expands, twists and buzzes of Shang-chiTen rings. Since the Eternals themselves are unknown to the Avengers, it’s no exaggeration to imagine that no one on the team has come across the Celestial technology, and it would also explain why it’s not even similar to anything they’ve seen before. Phastos’s work is much closer to the crude manipulation of the very matter of the cosmos. And maybe some of that work is exactly what Wenwu discovered all those years ago.

It could all be a coincidence, of course: the concentric CGI shapes that rotate when an actor waves their hand have been a cool detail in the movie since Minority Report. But remember the promise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: everything is connected.

And if Marvel wants to connect Shang-chi for Eternal, seems to have left the road.